User blog:SwordLily621/RotSP thoughts - part 2
I really want to type out all the thoughts that I have about this game, even if it's just for myself, before the excitement wears off and I get distracted by something else, so here I am continuing :) SPOILERS, obviously. This part will be mostly me speaking about characters, with some random impressions and headcanons. Ridiculous amounts of text ahead, I'm sorry - you don't have to read this! Serafina and Mercy: * Maybe my feelings would be different if I hadn't played the beta, but I really loved Serafina and Mercy back when the beta came out, I believed them that they loved Brigid like a sister, and I was seriously expecting them to end up on our side. So Mercy's total evilness and their deaths were one of my two biggest disappointments in the whole game. * one thing that surprised me pleasantly in this ending, however, was that they weren't a "package deal", in the sense that I expected them to have the exact same goals and loyalties, and definitely did not expect them to be so different that one would kill the other. From a more detached point of view, I find this a very creative decision, although as a fan, I'd still prefer their individual personalities to manifest in such a way that they'd both end up good and alive. Like, maybe it could take different approaches to convince them to drop their loyalty for the witch? But yeah, still a creative decision. It was also interesting to watch how this split between them came in gradual stages and not all of a sudden: the first hint was, I think, a note by the witch that said something like "Serafina is emotional like humans and Mercy is perfect like me"; then the moment right before they try to kill the detective when Mercy is all cold and Serafina first worries about how Mercy handles Brigid and then apologizes to the detective; and then, well, Serafina finally switches sides and Mercy kills her. * on the other hand, while their differences made for some non-stereotypical developments, the final reveal of the calm rational character associated with ice being heartless and cruel was very stereotypical. To the point where I'm having a hard time thinking of her as a villain. Imo, it really would have been better if Mercy was being set up as cruel all "look how cold and emotionless she is" and then was shown to really be kind and loving, just in her own quiet and reasonable sort of way. I still sort of... think of her this way automatically before remembering - oh, right, she's evil actually. * another thing: now that I think back on the things Mercy and Serafina said in the beginning parts of the game, it's really sad to realise that what seemed cute and warm and just normal "giving a character background details for depth" sort of thing is actually twisted and dark. Like, of course Serafina is the older sister: bc she is "not perfect". She was probably good enough to not be destroyed, but the witch wasn't satisfied with her little alchemy project until she created Mercy. You know, it's a thing irl that kids who are told they will have a sibling sometimes react in the "this means I'm not good enough" sort of way? Well, this story is that, only very literally. And when Mercy is all like "Serafina cannot stay out of trouble, I apologise for her", this isn't teasing sibling fake-exasperation - this is her really thinking that Serafina is a failure. :( Nuada: * well, here's the other extremely disappointing thing: his death. I really, really feared that Nuada would die, and at different points in game I alternated between "oh no, this is very ominous, he's probably dying soon, isn't he, game, please, no" and "oh good, this means there's no way he'd die now". Which is good, in a way - I would've liked that I wasn't able to predict how the story would end for him, that the game kept me emotionally invested and on the edge of my seat - but I only would've liked it if he'd survived, and he didn't! And... okay, I can be very emotional when I'm immersed in media I like, so when I played, I kept saying to myself things like "I love this game" and at one point "can I marry this game?" After Nuada died and the main game ended, my reaction was a flat "I'm divorcing this game". :/ After so much genuine worry for this character... this kind of hit me hard. I think this might have contributed to me rushing through the bonus - I was too upset to really focus on the game anymore, I think. * in a way, it was the same thing as with Mercy: some things about Nuada's story were extremely non-stereotypical and cleverly done, and some felt to me so stereotypical I still can't believe this. The most non-stereotypical thing was the contrast between his appearance/initial behavior and his actual personality. He looked like this overly aggressive violent no-self-control savage character type, and every time he actually said or did something, I marveled at his common sense and intelligence and ability to calm himself down. Like when we ran into him after getting out of the library fire, and he was like "there you are, you tried to kill me" and then surprised me with "I know you're not my enemy"; when he was like "I can't summon Solais right now bc the mine would collapse" during the face-off with Serafina; even when he consistently prioritised Brigid's safety, especially how he calmly left with her at the beta-ending point without getting distracted to fight Serafina and Mercy, even though he thought they deserved to die. He reads like such a thoughtful, caring, observant, introverted person to me, and it was fantastic how, despite the change in appearance and the context in which we see him, I felt like the characterisation stayed consistent between the main game and the bonus. * look, game, you've already done the "setting someone up to be the villain with negative personality traits... oh, surprise, he's not a villain, and those personality traits are superficial, not key ones" thing once to a great success. Why couldn't you do the same with Mercy? Why? :/ * when I said some things about Nuada's story were unbelievably stereotypical, I meant the fact that he dies in the context of the fact that his "happily ever after" was already ruined - he lost his wife early in tragic events and never got to raise his daughter. I really don't like the decision to kill him off in that context, bc that kind of sends the message of "now that your one true love is dead, your life is a tragedy and you can't be happy ever". Like "we can't give him a happy ending now, let's just kill him". Like all his worth as a person is in romance, and the only way to be happy is romance, and of course you can only find true love once. BTG already did a fantastic job of averting that last trope in James, and I fully expected them to avert the other ones in Nuada via giving him a second chance in happiness in being a father and a king, bonding with his daughter and rebuilding his clan. I actually took his "I knew Wanda would die long before me anyway, but I still chose to marry her" comment as foreshadowing that Nuada wouldn't die, bc in a way, where he's standing now - a hundred years later, still a lot of years left to live, with his daughter beside him, but with his wife long dead - is where he was supposed to be all along. This is the happiest things could've been for him personally in any case, so - why did he have to be killed off? Oh well. We get what we get. * I actually want to talk specifically about the way in which he died. This is something else that frustrated me to no end. There was so much talk in the game about how daemons are linked with their evokers in such a manner that if one is hurt/killed, the other is too, that I assumed this would be significant later. When I first caught on to this, I got scared that we would kill Nuada via killing Solais, without realising the whole extent of what we were doing. There were instructions on how to hurt a dragon with a lance, and we had the lance, and when we had to throw it... I was literally saying "game, please, I'm begging you, don't". Then the dragon flew off, and I went "phew, well played, game, well played. Don't we have a healing kit somewhere waiting to be opened? We're totally gonna heal Nuada from this injury that we inflicted on him. He'll be fine!" Then the game started pushing the "Nuada didn't die when the palace collapsed, but he was very weakened from spending time under the mine" thing, and Nuada said that he might have the energy to summon Solais one last time, and I was like "oh no, don't tell me Solais is gonna die of exhaustion bc of all the effort, and Nuada with him?" But that... that, at least, would have made sense. That would've built off of all the foreshadowing in a clever way. And it would've been especially touching if Nuada knew exactly what he was risking and still did it to save Brigid. The way Nuada actually died... um... random, basically. I was left confused. And, no, somehow it didn't feel as touching this way. * side question: did anyone understand how on earth Nuada survived for a hundred years trapped under the palace? He had to eat, didn't he? Or does his brand of semi-immortality allow for not eating anything for a hundred years? Did it only "weaken" him (not that he appears to be weakened)? Also, I still don't understand, was the man with the "come back" note Nuada under the magic of compulsion or just a random person? Yay for overthinking stuff! * random Nuada headcanon, to end on a positive note: he totally didn't tell Wanda that there was a prophecy about them. Not until she chose him definitively. He probably wanted the prophecy to come true naturally, and he didn't want to pressure Wanda into choosing him :) Stopping for now. See, this - this series of posts that I'm writing - is why I loved the game so much: yes, I'm definitely critical about many aspects of it, but in the end the game makes me think and isn't letting me go. There's a lot of things I loved, too, but this quality of being so thought-provoking is what really makes it a Dark Parables game in its essence for me. :) Category:Blog posts